Chair Joseph proposes student ambassadors; Stephen Ferst recalls campus campaign
Chair Joseph suggests recruiting returning students as credible messengers and ambassadors because students listen to peers. Ferst recalls a CSI anti-litter campaign with student posters and says CUNY could copy that model to show New York City students taking on the world.
So maybe you need to recruit some of the students who went abroad and become that credible messenger for you, become that ambassador and tell their stories.
Students like to listen to each other.
No matter how great we are as educators, they're like, yeah, all right, whatever.
But if a peer says, hey, I had such an amazing time in this experience, you should go.
These are the things that I did.
This is the path that I took.
They'll listen to their peers over us.
Might I add that when I arrived at CSI, which was about 13 years ago, there was a campaign that had just concluded or was just concluding where the
college, I believe, had partnered with, definitely with the city, to create a grant program to create posters of students.
And it was a clean up the campus.
It was a non, it was don't trash the campus campaign.
And there were little quotes from all these students, leaders across campus saying, this is what I say about trash.
And this is what our mascot says about trash and why you shouldn't litter on campus.
And I remember that this campaign, as I think about it, was.
is both a kind of a partnership between the college and between the city to develop these.
So it was pretty effective.
Students were able to see themselves.
Students were able to see other student leaders.
And we would like to copy that type of campaign.
And I think that's a collaborative thing that we could do across the city, show New York City students.
Taking on the world.
We should, and that's one of the things I've always encouraged New York City public schools to do, get the students involved.
Let them be the voice.
Empower them as they, as I said, just like peer tutoring.
I can teach something very well and students don't take it, but another peer comes in and it's easier.